Human Obsession

CC Image courtesy of cliff1066 on Flickr

Biographical Note:

Many people have told me many thing of how I am. They say I have a philosophical mind, that I am caring and helpful, that I can catch certain concepts that others wouldn't bother to consider, and that I complicate myself. Now, all of these is true, but there is more to me than what other people see. At home when there ain't no work to be done I jump on my rolling chair and go into a video game spree. It sounds like a sedentary lifestyle, but fear not, for I do sports as well. I'm swimming almost professionally, play defence during soccer games as best as any teenager can, and used to do karate and dodge ball. But their is always some physical imper that has to hold me back. But trust me I still got the skill so come get your pill.

Human Obsession

by Bryan

Saint James Hampton was night employee at the General Services Administration in Washington D.C., were he created multiple structures for “God.” This man was obsessed with the idea that he was holy and that God sent him to build relics to create the Third Heaven, which for him was a heaven for the sky, the planet, and the Almighty. There are many people obsessed with many diverse objects or activities, but whether that obsession makes a person better depends on the way the individual manages his or her obsession. In the case of David Kim, he is obsessed with weapons. He could tell you the name of most firearms and rate each based on traits. This is type of obsession can be examined by how this specific obsession affects the individual, David, as a whole.

In the article of The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nation’s Millennium General Assembly the author, J. Hunter Barbour, explains how Saint James Hampton, a janitor at the General Services Administration in Washington, became obsessed with the making of “holy” relics to receive the savior. All of this happened due to Saint James belief that he was shown something divine after seeing a vision when he migrated to the District of Columbia at the age nineteen. It was because of these revelations that he never married and why he created all of his holy work. In this same article it explains how this man would spend hours after work, making masterworks out of foil, paper, plastic, strips of metal, jelly jars, and lots of scrap that he picked up from work or secondhand stores. In the majority of his artworks he would inscribe biblical phrases like “Fear Not” on the top of a wooden throne-like chair. Now, if a man believes they have seen God or any divine being, they will likely fall to their knees and do what the Almighty commands. In the case of Hampton, he himself says that God instructed him to work each night on the “Throne of the Third Heaven.” This is why I belief that Saint James was obsessed with creating the “Throne of the Third Heaven”; because he believed to have holy revelation as he it’s describe in the article, “This is true that the great Moses the giver of the 10th commandment appeared in Washington DC, April 11, 1931.”

A person doesn’t need to be shown something divine to be obsessed with an object or activity. David Kim is an example of this. As his friend, I know the many times he has proved me wrong about a firearms weapon. He sometimes can’t stop talking about a specific weapon once he sees a very intriguing weapon. Once he was able to identify the type of revolver just by looking at an image of it. His great knowledge of weapons, however, comes from his other obsession. First-Person-Shooter (FPS) games. Since each weapon is different, players must know the weapon they use well to know how to use it effectively. He began being obsessed with FPS games. He would play eight to ten hours almost on a daily basis and if interrupted, he would go berserk. This, however, lead to an interest in firearms. So one obsession lead to another.

All of this has lead me to believe that an obsession doesn’t spark out of the nowhere. It must be stimulated by either another action or event that in the mind of the person obsessed. It’s something that provides pleasure. To Saint James, the idea that he was doing work for a divine being definitely brought pleasure in the sense that he believed that he was doing something admirable for someone as revered as God. In the case of David, his obsession with weapons all started by the simple need to know how weapons work so that the stimulation of scoring victory in any FPS would stratify his needs. An obsession is not by definition bad, it can lead to positive. Now the needs that an obsession satisfies and what must be pained to achieve define where his or her obsession is a positive, negative, or neutral one. It’s all in the mind.

Drinking Words

Sometimes a story is so good, you wish it were true. And sometimes a story is so true, it seems unbelievable.


I’ve spent the last four hours researching a claim which I read years ago in a source I can’t remember. It’s a tidbit that I’ve shared with my World Literature Class many times over the years. The claim relates to papyrus, the thick fibrous material on which Ancient Egyptian scribes did their writing. I wasn’t able to find the original source -- I think it may have been an interview with a writer – but I was able to find another source, Egyptian Papyrus and Papyrus-Hunting by James Baikie, which tells the same story. According to Baikie, scribes would reuse papyrus by washing the ink out with a liquid:

“In spite of the admirable quality of the ink used by the ancient Egyptian scribe, the process of washing-out was apparently quite an easy one. It was frequently resorted to, not only for the purpose of preparing a sheet of new writing, but for quite another purpose. The ancient Egyptian had a profound belief in the magical virtue of the written word, and one of his favourite ways of possessing himself of knowledge was to wash off in beer the writing of any roll whose contents he wished to make infallibly his own, subsequently drinking the beer. He thus literally absorbed the knowledge which he desired to possess.”

This is a charming story on many levels. It is easy to imagine the poor scribe, toiling away inside the a massive and impersonal Egyptian bureaucracy, being asked by his boss to wash out a papyrus containing some beautiful poem in order to reuse it to copy out some pedestrian account of grain holdings or the sale of cattle from one noble to another. He became a scribe because he loved words and yet, here he is, being asked to destroy the very things he loves. How can he honor them? By taking them into himself and letting them become a part of him.


The fact that he dissolves the words in beer is a nice touch too. It speaks directly to the feeling of intoxication that can overcome us when we read something truly inspiring or strange or well-written, especially when we read these words out loud. The other day I entertained my class of high school seniors during a lull by reading to them from the beginning of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. Read them out loud yourself and see if you don’t start to get a buzz:

“rivverun past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntro-varrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and lateron life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.”

This is language inspiring and strange and almost impossible to read without stumbling, but if you succeed, its sense of flow, the winding way its riverish words overwhelm simple meanings and spill out over the page, is unparalleled. Just look at that glorious onomatopoeia Joyce created to capture the sound of Humpty Dumpty’s fall off of the wall. As I understand it he’s also referring to Adam and Eve, Jesus, and the Irish folk song character Finnegan, all of whom experience a “fall” of one kind or another – that’s the virtue of watery words: they can fit to fill many different vessels all at once.

True lovers of language, whether they’re poets or rappers (who “spit” rhymes) or writers like Baikie’s Egyptian scribe, don’t just love language for what it means: they love it for how it sounds, for how it looks on the page, and for how it feels in your mouth as you speak it. They love the fact that there is a word, mouthfeel, that precisely captures this quality. The moment I fell in love with Moby Dick wasn’t the moment that it told me a great truth or imparted interesting information. It was the moment that I read the following description of a bar:

“within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death.

Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders without - within, the villainous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom.”

By the time I hit that final splash of alliteration and assonance: “villainous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards,” I wanted to submerge myself in Melville’s words and never come up for air. Every child knows the pleasure of a tongue-twister, and there are some writers, like Melville and Joyce, who seem not to have forgotten. They elevate the tongue-twister to a legitimate art in its own right.

But as fun as intoxication can be, clarity of thought is an important corrective. The beer the Egyptians drank wasn’t necessarily like the beer we drink today: in the centuries before water purification, alcohol of one kind or another, usually heavily diluted, was the drink of choice for people all over the world. So the scribe’s beer may not have been so intoxicating after all.

And clearly considered, Baikie’s story starts to evaporate.

Eating Books

One of my favorite stories about books occurs in the New Testament’s bravura final section, the Book of Revelation. This section is a crazy-quilt collection of intense religious hallucinations experienced by the author, John of Patmos. To this day it remains one of the most controversial and widely read books of the New Testament because Biblical scholars are still arguing about what it means. John’s revelations are cryptic and often confusing, but for sheer imagery it’s hard to think of another book ever written that surpasses its vivid strangeness.


The part of Revelation that captured my interest more than any other occurs at the end of the 10th chapter of the Book of Revelation, but I’m going to quote the whole thing here just because it’s so awe-inspiringly wild and weird.

Revelation 10

[1] And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire:

[2] And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth,

[3] And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.

[4] And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.

[5] And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,

[6] And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:

[7] But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

[8] And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth.

[9] And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.

[10] And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.

[11] And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.

  

What struck me immediately upon reading this section was the oddness of the voice’s request. Eat the book?

But after a moment, it made a lot of sense to me. Reading a book is an act that we recognize as being related to the process of eating:

• You take the words in.
• You break them down into a form that is understandable to you.
• You are nourished by what you have learned
• Your body is changed by the process (this is literally true: reading actually changes the structure of your brain).

That’s why, if we finish a book quickly, we say we devoured it. If we need time to think about it, we say we're still digesting it.

In Revelations, the book that John eats “was in my mouth sweet as honey” but “as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.” Reading this with a mind full of gustatory metaphors I immediately thought of licorice, perhaps because my first taste of licorice, at age 4, was so surprising that I’ve never forgotten it: for the first second I gobbled it up, and then the full taste hit me and I cried and cried. I felt like I had been tricked by that momentary sweetness.

There are books like that, too; books that are so well-written that they draw you in with their sweetness, only to convey a difficult or upsetting message. Biblical scholars have interpreted this scene as a description of the process of reading and understanding the New Testament itself: initially, the descriptions of God’s love and care for individuals as expressed by Jesus are exciting and make the reader feel deliciously happy, but as the reader comes to realize the personal responsibility and commitment that spring from the recognition of that all-encompassing love, it turns out to be much more difficult and much less pleasant to truly live up to Christian values. This is the bitter medicine that the honey hides.

  

But of course, that’s just one interpretation, and there are many kinds of nourishment. In the following poem, Galway Kinnell develops a metaphorical relationship between the “black art” of writing poetry and the taste of blackberries.

Blackberry Eating
I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,

the stalks very prickly, a penalty

they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries

fall almost unbidden to my tongue,

as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,

which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well

in the silent, startled, icy, black language

of blackberry-eating in late September.

Here, Kinnell gives us the reverse of John of Patmos’ experience: the berries might be difficult to pick, but they are undeniably tasty and soul-satisfying when eaten.

These reflections on reading and eating made me wonder how I would describe some of my favorite books as meals. Here are some of mine: what kind of meal would your favorite book be?

Moby Dick: A rich, creamy seafood chowder, washed down with a pint of exceptionally strong and bitter beer.

This one is a no-brainer; Melville actually has his narrator, Ishmael, describe exactly the chowder I mean in Chapter 15 of the book (a chapter called, naturally, “Chowder”): Oh! sweet friends, hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuits, and salted pork cut up into little flakes! the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt.”

 Waiting for Godot:

After you order, the waiter brings you a small, warm piece of brown bread with a delicious pat of kerrygold Irish butter and a refreshing glass of ice water. Then he disappears into the kitchen for an hour. When he finally comes out again, he tells you your food is almost ready and asks whether you would like some more bread and water until your meal arrives. He brings you some more bread, but this time it is cold and hard and there is no butter and the water is room temperature. The waiter disappears into the kitchen again. After another hour, the lights in the restaurant are suddenly turned off and you realize that everyone else went home a long time ago and all the doors are locked.

The Phantom Tollbooth:

An assortment of jellybeans of startling flavors: olive oil, lavender, aluminum, paste, Granny Smith apple etc.

Fun is great!

Biographical Note:

Hi. My name is Josh, hence the title. Dictionaries burn my hands, I hate homework, I love the school lunches, I get iPod cuts, and I only have three pencils in my pocket. I used to have a quaker bird (parrot) that would sit on my shoulder and do disgusting stuff, but when I was at my friends house, the bird bit my dad's finger. So my mom got mad and gave him away to the bird pound. And those were the three most fun days in my life. Fun is Great! by Josh Fun is great, but in my house, fun is too much of a privilege for my mom and dad to handle. Like the other day, I had basically no homework, so I used my time to play as much video games as I could get into a day. But of course, when mom walked in, it was too much fun. So now that I could not do that, I decided to protest by acting super-bored and staring at walls. I have to say my mom scored on that one, because protesting was fun, but still, it's like saying, "Oh, you're having fun?!? Okay, ten days in jail." I never tell my mom that I'm bored, because she always makes me read a book. I have nothing against books, but I have everything against being forced to read a book I have already read 15 times. I think it's because they're (my parents) are jealous. If I can rot my brains more than they can, I suffer for it. But then again, every parent has something against the TV. Not all fun is in video games though, pranks, man, I can go a million ways with that one, but the tickle your nose and shaving cream one is the winner for me. Who knew a little shaving cream could be so much fun? But since this was in my house, I got in trouble for using too much shaving cream. And also, like in theme parks: I was about to go on the ride that scares the recently eaten food out of my stomach, and my mom said, "take your sister with you!" And I knew what that meant, no fun. To make matters worse, it was on my birthday. How cruel. Another cruel thing is when I get a new toy, so my parents go crazy. Where do I start when they get that kind of green light? They search for every possible flaw they can conjure up: "Josh!! I told you a million times to hang up your towel!!!" "Sorry mom, I hang it up right now." "You can't play with your new toy for a week." I guess I have to stick to books.

Film changed the freaking world!

This is 11 minutes of film from 1906.

1906!

Film was only invented roughly 30 years before. By some estimates, 6 billion people worldwide will have their own MOBILE web media viewers by the year 2013. That means that 6 billion people will have access to mobile cameras and youtube.

How do you think life was different for people before we had the ability to film our lives? If you could go back and ask one of these people walking down Market Street in San Francisco questions about their lives without movies everywhere, what would you ask them?

The Best Essay You Will Ever Read About a (Sadly) Dead Narrative Form

I tried for a long time to write something about this amazing essay on Choose Your Own Adventure books, but it is so fantastically thorough and so beautifully put together that there's not much to add. It is perhaps the single best thing I have ever read about narrative and I encourage you to have a look. Mindblowing. Books! Computer Science! Video games! Media theory! Statistics! Charts and graphs! The charts and graphs alone make this essay worth a look. Here are a couple to whet your appetite:

In the Mystery of Chimney Rock, the reader is carried inexorably forward.

In House of Danger, many are the twists of fate.

Also, don't miss the animations and the gallery that can be reached from the navigation bar at the top left of the page. You can even play the CYOA version of the classic computer text adventure Zork.

Since I grew up in the 80s, these books are a part of my reading experience which I will never forget, especially not the ending in the Lost Jewels of Nabooti that finds you shoved into a pit without anything to eat and drink. After three days of hunger and thirst, you have given up. Your lips are parched and cracked. All you can think about is water. And then a miracle: it begins to rain! Sweet, sweet relief! Within moments the rain becomes a torrential downpour, and the walls of the pit collapse, entombing you and drowning you in mud.

R. A. Mongomery, you are one cold-hearted jerk. I never did find the Jewels of Nabooti. I didn't want to die like that more than once.

Now That's What I Call Loving Literature!

Just a very quick post to draw your attention to this monumental and awesome project. For a year and a half, artist Matt Kish has been toiling away at a ridiculous, astounding, and flat out awesome task: to illustrate EVERY PAGE of Herman Melville's classic novel, Moby Dick. He started in August of 2009, and finished at the end of this January. If you don't want to read his musings on the process (which are fascinating) and just want to look at the art, you can see batches of pages here.

Here, for instance, is his illustration for page 550, which includes the quote:

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"

I think I have a contender for my next tattoo...


As you may or may not know, Moby Dick is also my favorite book. I could imagine myself, in another life, undertaking a task such as this. What books would you like to illustrate if you had the time and talent?